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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Sneak Peek - Chapter One

Today I'm sharing the first chapter of my current work-in-progress, Whatever Remains. Keep in mind this is very much a rough draft, but I wanted to offer a sneak peek of my foray into mystery. If all goes as planned, it should be ready for beta reading by late summer. Enjoy!

1

A night: crickets, tree frogs,
shifting lace shadows on the grass, tussle of branches, the damp growing cold
and settling in. A nameless, ageless, onyx absence of the sun like all the
others. It felt like the first cool fingers of October; tasted like the last
strawberry bite of July; fell somewhere in the middle with a smell of burning
leaves. It was just a night…

Until it became one of those nights
that stops time. Until it gained the power to alter lives and shred psyches.
Death walked into that night, dragging through the wood, rending the quiet with
its inhuman hot breath: panting and poised and terrible.

Deer crashed through the underbrush;
round yellow eyes watched. And Death left its offering on a bed of soft white
sand, scalloped and pocked as beach dunes. Under the great black bowl of the
sky, a face tipped to the stars, sightless and waiting, washed in light
flickering with moth-dance, almost alive if you squinted, just sleeping.

Deep down, Ben had
never expected to end up with a sister-in-law. His brother had been the sort of
non-restless, wholly satisfied bachelor for so long…right up until it hadn’t
been enough. It had been sudden. Chris had gone from indifferent to invested in
just a few short months, acquiring a stepkid and impregnating his honey before
the rest of the family had even been introduced to her.

“Cheesecake, Ben?” Jess asked him
from her kitchen counter. Her tone was a coolly polite, detached reminder that
the two of them would never be friends; he couldn’t blame her, he guessed,
after he’d all but called her a slut. She turned to regard him over her
shoulder, expression removed; she was in little white slip-on sneakers and a
pretty blue cotton dress. It hugged her hips in just the right way; provided a
backdrop for the thick spill of honey blonde hair down her back. The line of
tension down her bicep made him think she could have used the knife in her hand
for something more sinister than slicing cake if he gave her a reason.

“No.” He reached for his coffee and
remembered his manners. “Thanks. But I should head out.”

“Here.” Chris rolled a
cellophane-wrapped cigar across the table to him and stood. “Smoke before you
go?”

“Sure.”

Ben stood and shrugged into his
jacket – a lightweight, dark canvas number he wore off the job – and watched
his brother go to the counter and settle a hand on his wife’s waist just low
enough to be indecent. He kissed her temple and drew a diagram through the air
with his finger of the giant slice of cheesecake he wanted; she smiled and her
face softened, lit, and sparkled. She was a gorgeous girl when she wasn’t
scowling. The way she looked at Chris almost made Ben think…

Nope. It didn’t make him think of
anything.

“Bye, guys.” He offered a lame wave
to Jess’s son Tyler and the baby in her high chair, Maddie. Tyler watched him
like he didn’t trust him. And babies – with their unabashed staring and
bi-polar mood swings – had always unnerved him; Maddie was no exception.

He followed Chris down the back
steps off the kitchen to the paved patio; Chris was constantly improving the
house – inn – where he and Jess lived, putting his contractor’s license to good
use. The patio was a new addition, there was a fire pit and a low stone bench,
a few white wicker chairs. Ben propped a boot on the bench and waited for Chris
to finish with the lighter.

“How’s work?” Chris asked.

Ben took the lighter and clamped his
cigar tight in his teeth, speaking around it. “You already asked me that.”

“Yeah.” Chris gave him a level look
through the dim light cast by the backdoor’s coach lamps. “But I figure I got
the kid-friendly version inside.”

“Oh, so I’m a liar?”

Chris grinned. “I renovate bathrooms
for the Real Housewife crowd. You solve murders. Which one of us is more likely
to need a PG cover story?”

“Dunno. I hear those Real Housewives
like a little handyman action now and then.”

“Ben.”

“Huh?”

“Stop being an asshole.”

“Well that’s not gonna happen.” He
turned and sat down on the low stone wall. Across the drive, the skeletal
framework of the addition Chris was putting on the guest cottage gleamed white
as bleached bone. Jess’s sister was having another kid and didn’t have a place
to put it – or, it seemed, the will to move out and find a place of her own.
Not only had Chris taken on a woman and kid, but a brother- and sister-in-law
too, and their kids. “Why’s marriage
turned you into the older brother?” he asked.

“That bad?” Chris asked.

He sighed. “It’s been keeping me
busy.” Chris’s brows twitched; for a homicide detective, “busy” was never a
good thing. “Atlanta’s creeping into the ‘burbs,” Ben explained, “and with it
comes coke and H and even more meth than the hillbillies are flooding into the
high schools. Murder,” he said for emphasis, “is more common than most people
in Cobb County want to think.”

A shadow moved across a curtained
window of the cottage: a slight, feminine shape that must have been Joanna,
Jess’s sister.

Chris murmured a note of agreement.
“Well, if you ever need to get away from it, Jess always makes more food than
we need.”

“The last thing your wife wants is
me hanging around.”

“I don’t think…it’s just…okay, she
doesn’t want you hanging around.”

Ben twitched a fast non-smile.

“She thinks your ‘evil’ is gonna rub
off on the kids,” Chris admitted with a chuckle.

“She’s probably right.”

It was a cool night for early
autumn; layered between the chirrups of insects, a sharp promise of frost
crackled in the air, heady with the scent of faraway snow. It stood the fine
hairs up on the back of Ben’s neck; sent a nameless, useless thrill humming
along beneath his skin. “Nights like this,”
someone had told him, not so long ago, “feel
like the world’s waiting for something.” He was sure, in hindsight, that on
that night on a back step with a shared bottle of grocery store Pinot Noir, the
girl beside him had wanted the two of them to be that something special the
world was waiting for. She’d been breathless and flushed from kissing, eyes
little moons set in the statue-perfect lines of her alabaster face; and she’d
been fizzing from a magic he hadn’t understood or wanted to feel. Every time a
night turned prickly and uncertain – waiting, as she’d said – he’d think of
her, and that was never a welcome train of thought.

He took a fast, too-hard drag on his
cigar and felt nausea ripple through him; he wasn’t a smoker by nature.

“The offer’s there all the same,
though,” Chris said, which didn’t help his stomach.

Ben was forming another lame-ass
stab at little-brother-going-big-brother when his phone came to life in his
jacket pocket.

If he’d only known what waited on
the other end of the line, he would have let the damn thing go to voicemail.

“You look nice.”

Jade smoothed her hands down her hips,
over the clinging black cotton/spandex of her skirt. She’d spent half the week
planning her outfit for tonight, all the way down to her toenail polish – a
drug store shade of pink called Get Juiced. “Nice?” She lifted her brows in
question. “Just nice?”

Jeremy and Clara made for an
adorable picture: snuggled back in the corner of the love seat, draped in a
chenille throw, yaupons dancing on the other side of the black window glass,
Disney movie throwing leaping blue shadows across their faces. Clara was
bundled in the crook of Jeremy’s arm, sucking her thumb, hugging her favorite
stuffed rabbit, Oatmeal, around the neck. Jeremy had showered after his last
lesson of the afternoon and not bothered to dry his hair; it was soft and
sticking up in places

Clara popped her thumb out of her
mouth, staring at the TV as she said, “Kid. That spells kid.”

“Smart girl.” Jeremy gave her a
squeeze.

Jade sighed. She was a smart girl, which made this whole
Mommy-on-a-date thing so much more difficult. “Are you sure you two’ll be
alright?” she asked and earned an eye roll for it. “I’m serious, Remy. I can
call Asher and cancel.”

“Cancel?” Jeremy breathed a laugh.
“And do what? Sit at home and watch Cinderella?”

“Well…”

“You’re just nervous.
Understandable: Asher is the first adult human male you’ve been out with
since…ever.”

She gave him a warning look and he
grinned again.

“Go on your date. Have fun. Leave
some sort of undergarment in the back of his car. Chickadee and I are going to
princess it up and do night check. Right?”

Clara spared him a fast, adoring
glance before the TV sucked her back in again. “Right.”

Jade opened her mouth for further
protest…

And the doorbell rang.

Jeremy gave her his sternest look,
one made less than threatening by the graceful Michelangelo lines of his brows.
“Go.”

Her stomach rolled. “Fine.” She went to the sofa and dropped
a kiss on her daughter’s warm cheek; raked her fingers through her very best
friend’s hair, smiling when he ducked away. “I’ll call you.”

“Bye, Mommy.”

“Undergarment in the backseat,”
Jeremy reminded.

They had been in the den – one of
those cozy, wood-paneled, stone fireplace numbers sunk down at the back of the
midcentury farmhouse they’d called home the past five years; it had been some
man’s trophy room in the past and Jeremy had helped her turn it into something
tasteful and retro, with overstuffed furniture and subdued knickknacks – and
she spent the walk to the front door doing last minute adjustments: a nail
through an eyebrow, a straightening of her top, a fluff of her hair. Warm beams
from the porch light streamed in through the glass-paneled front door, falling
across the glossy brick of the foyer floor, limning her date’s profile in gold.

You
can do this, she reminded herself, and took one last deep, shivery breath
before she opened the door.

Mid-thirties, sandy-haired, handsome
in a soft, unathletic way, Asher McMahon had been reaching for a paint swatch
in Home Depot alongside her. Their hands had brushed, Jade had pulled back,
apologizing, and he’d grinned at her in a sweet, boyish way that had prompted
her to ask about his painting project; Clara had been with her, but it had
seemed a harmless enough topic. Discussing their living rooms had led to number-swapping,
and his assertion that yes, he loved horses and, of course, he’d love to come
take a lesson from her. Five minutes on top of Pokey – her aptly-named school
horse – and he’d been forced to admit defeat: he was terrified of horses, but
he’d love to take her out sometime if she’d let him. They’d been on four dates.
This was their fifth and, for some reason she couldn’t name, their phone calls
the last few days had smacked of expectation, on both their parts. It had been
a long time, Jeremy had reminded, since she’d had any “action,” and Asher was
sweet, and more than smitten.

He greeted her with one of those
easy smiles she was beginning to think she could get used to. “Wow.” His eyes
skipped from her face to her toes and back again. “You look amazing.”

He was in a tasteful checked shirt,
khakis, navy blazer; she smiled. “You look good, too.”

Because it was starting to feel
natural, she pressed her palms to his chest and stretched up for a kiss: a
quick, open-mouthed peck that didn’t make any sound, fast, safe smiles traded
afterward. Jade pulled the door to behind her, shouldered her purse, and
slipped her arm through his offered one.

The night was boldly crisp, the wind
tossing the trees together with almost human sighs. The Mondo grass hadn’t died
back yet and flapped in variegated tendrils over the terraced front walk as it
narrowed and curved around the slope of the front lawn. Jade suppressed a
shudder and felt gooseflesh pebble her skin beneath her light jacket.

“Cold?” Asher asked.

“Little bit.”

If she was honest, there was
something thrilling about a cold, slapping breeze on a date night. It pressed
them together: two people seeking shelter against one another. It was a silly
thought – one that hadn’t crossed her mind in years – and she chased it away
with an internal headshake; she had no room for anything silly in her life anymore.

The sidewalk curled round the house
and joined the drive where it forked; the right branch fed into the drive-under
garage at the back of the house, and the other continued down the hill to the
parking pad beside the barn. Security lights at the garage and down by the barn
– around the arena and over the double front doors – anchored a property black
with night and liquid with shifting shadows. It was eerie: long fingers of
branches, bowing stalks of pompous grass, rattling of a loose chain somewhere.

Asher used his remote to unlock his
4-Runner and Jade took one last moment to take visual inventory of the farm –
what she could see of it – before she left. It was an old habit that she and
Jeremy shared, this unending obsession with crossing Is and dotting Ts. Horses,
she swore, made a person OCD. She checked that the garage doors were down and
the water dish for the cats was full; she checked that the barn doors were open
a crack and that the gate leading through the side paddock to the arena was
closed; she looked –

Something was in her arena. A dog. A
thin, lanky, fluffy-tailed thing snuffling along the ground. Not a dog – a coyote.

“Hey!” She shook her arm loose from
Asher’s and took three long strides down the driveway, clapping her hands.
“Get! Get outta here!”

Asher said, “What?”

The coyote lifted its head and went
still; she could tell he was staring at her, even all this distance away. There
was something else, she saw, something down at its feet, whatever it had been
smelling.

She took another few steps, smacking
her palms together. “Get lost!”

“Jade,” Asher said behind her, “what
is – shit! Is that a wolf?”

Later, she would think to roll her
eyes about him thinking there could possibly be a wolf in Georgia, but for the
moment, she was riveted by the uneven shape in the middle of the arena. The
coyote went flitting away, more light-footed than any dog, squeezing between
the fence boards and disappearing in the woods. But his prey hadn’t stirred. It
was too large to be a possum or rabbit, and not the right shape for a deer. His
dinner? she wondered. Had he been eating…?

“Jade!” Asher called, and his voice
sounded far away because she had, to her surprise, gone halfway down the drive
and was closing in on the barn at a fast clip. Her pumps rapped against the
asphalt, the sound echoing against the trunks of the old oaks that shaded the
drive and played havoc on her depth perception as their shadows weaved
together. Asher’s flat-soled loafers started down behind her.

For reasons she didn’t understand,
curiosity had become too big to ignore inside her mind, and she had to know
what poor thing lay under the lights on the arena sand. If it was a grisly
coyote kill, she’d need to warn Jeremy; she didn’t want Clara seeing it when
they went down for night check. If it was still alive – whatever it was – she’d
need to put it out of its misery.

Her heels went through the turf like
aerating spikes when she left the drive, so she walked on her tiptoes; felt the
grass slap at her ankles. There was a pedestrian gate that accessed the paddock
behind the barn and it squealed as she pushed it open. There was path – a worn
track in the grass where she and Jeremy and their students had passed hundreds
of times.

Asher caught up to her. “Jade,
what’s going on? What if that animal’s still down here?” He sounded more than a
little frightened by the prospect. “You’re gonna ruin your shoes.”

The arena – 100x200 and filled with
natural white sand – gleamed pale and eerie in the lamplight. Her eyes went
straight to the center, to what she’d thought must be the coyote’s meal, and
her brain registered the image before logic would allow her to believe it.

She’d seen this before – the
outstretched arms, the sunken hollows of prepubescent hips and chest, the
gangly legs curled – so many times in arenas: a child thrown from a horse,
gathering their breath before they sat up, bawling over their most recent
spill.

Only there was no horse.

There was an empty stretch of sand,
a figure too still to be real, and all she heard was the thunderous leap of her
own pulse cutting through the static whisper of the wind.

“Is that –” Asher started.

Jade wet her lips and fought the
panicky bile rising in her throat. “Call 911.”

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I’m an author fascinated by all the ordinary details that make the world extraordinary. I like character-driven dramas and that’s what I write. I love classic rock, classic cars, and classic literature – all things timeless and lasting. I'm proudly Southern, a dedicated horse owner and equestrian. With a few novels in print and more to come, I’m still most at home on the farm in my boots.